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About this Event

Women inspiring Women Conference

Why?

We need an apprenticeship system that offers women of all ages the best opportunities and makes the most of their talents.

The Inspiring Women in Apprenticeships Conference will celebrate females and apprentices who work in the Apprenticeship Sector, but will discuss and debate how we increase females who are disproportionately absent from careers in engineering, construction and transport. How can we help redress the balance?

Our speakers at the Inspiring Women Conference are made up of strong, successful women who were or are apprentices, who recruit apprentices, or who support the apprenticeship movement and want to see more women succeed through an apprenticeship.

Research has revealed that this could be down to the information provided by parents and teachers. When it comes to careers advice, 52% of girls say their parents don’t mind what they do (compared to 35% of boys), while half of girls (51%) surveyed said the career advice they got wasn’t that helpful compared to boys (39%).

It’s an issue that springs from the home too, with over a third of parents revealing that they offer differing career advice to their sons than to their daughters.

Could this mean that young women aren’t getting a balanced view from an early age? Or that the benefits of an apprenticeship are simply less well known?

What needs to be done?

There are 50 men for every woman starting a construction apprenticeship in England and 25 men for every woman embarking on an engineering course. A YouGov poll for Young Women’s Trust found that three in five employers think that positive action – steps like encouraging more women to apply and actively choosing women over men where they are equally qualified – is needed to achieve workplace gender equality but just a quarter have taken steps to improve women’s representation.

Women from a BAME background are significantly less likely to apply for an apprenticeship than those from a White background. This corresponds with the under-representation of women from a BAME background in the labour market, who in 2015 had an employment rate of 55.0 percent compared with a rate of 71.2% for women from a White background.

Although women are not generally under-represented in apprenticeships, the overall figures mask significant gender segregation within sectors.

Within engineering and manufacturing technologies (EMT), women account for just 6.7% (140) of successful applicants second only to ‘construction, planning and the built environment’, where women account for 3.8% (18) of successful applicants.

By contrast, women account for 89.6% (1,956) of successful applicants to ‘health, public services and care’, 72.7% (330) of successful applicants to ‘education and training’ and 66.1% (4,324) of successful applicants to ‘business, administration and law’, Over one half (53.1%) of all successful female applicants apply to the ‘business, administration and law’ sector, a further 24% to ‘health, public services and care’, and 11.7% to ‘retail and commercial enterprise’.

In total, these three sectors account for almost nine out of every ten (88.8%) successful female applicants.

This isn’t without its consequences. Because they are involved in typically lower-paying industries, female apprentices can receive an average 21% less per hour than their male counterparts in some roles. Meanwhile, 16% of young women reported being out of work after an apprenticeship, compared to just 6% of men.

By isolating female applicants, certain sectors are missing out on half of their potential talent pool. Over time, this has led to a skills gap in a number of key industries.

Join us on the 30th Jan, and hear from leading females in the Apprenticeships Sector. Conference website